Drug trafficking arteries snake through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and eventually make their way to Colorado where the meth road dead ends on the western slope. The shadow of the Roan Plateau and Grand Mesa provides cover for the drug trafficking roads that weave on the ground like salty, calcified capillaries. Around these parts, meth is known as "crank", "jib", "ice", "crystal", "tina", "glass", "P" or it’s referred to as the “poor man’s cocaine.”

Methamphetamine enters the cerebral cavity and triggers an exponential release of norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, the same chemicals that are responsible for the instinctual concoction that produces the human survival response. This adrenal smoothie stimulates the mesolimbic reward pathway, where performing repetitive tasks such as cleaning, hand-washing, assembling and disassembling objects and reopening skin lesions are symptoms of the euphoric excitement. Imagine having a bad nightmare with a severe feeling of bottomless vertigo while listening to “Dark Side of the Moon” backwards and forwards for 16 consecutive hours. Withdrawal symptoms are even worse.  

Meth is still thought to be something that is solely distilled and distributed from the household. There are even videos on YouTube demonstrating how to concoct the volatile chemicals from grocery store bought items. However, meth is trafficked into the area from Mexico where super-labs can produce ten or more pounds per day. The gross misconception has managed to divert law enforcement, executive offices and legislative congresses from approaching the problem in the best way possible.

“(The) Federal government has not been doing much to grasp this. Feds think it is a local problem and it isn’t, meth has never had the same level of impact on the east coast and that is why it hasn’t been acknowledged on the same level,” said Dr. Michael Gizzi, who is now an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois and spent ten years at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado as a Professor of Political Science and Criminal Justice.

“Meth in Colorado doesn’t come from local labs in Colorado, of the 46 meth lab incidents in the DEA database in 2007 only four of them came from the western slope,” said Dr. Gizzi.

According to the DEA’s meth database the number of meth related incidents has been declining since 2002. Those statistics, however, aren’t solely meth lab busts but include drug enforcement agent’s contact with meth related chemicals, dumpsites, glass and equipment.

Dr. Gizzi’s recent study examined meth users and their criminal behavior. Dr. Gizzi used the results of 200 interviews with offenders incarcerated at five county jails in western Colorado to determine the impact that meth had in the area. The interviews focused primarily on the inmate’s drug use and history with substance abuse, as well as the relationship of drug use and crime. According to Dr. Gizzi’s research, the western slope of Colorado is a region that has experienced a significant meth problem and as much as 80 percent of all felony drug cases involved meth in the four years preceding the study.

Fortunately for the western slope, Angie Wickersham, 28, of the Meth Task Force, which coordinates family treatment in Mesa County for meth abuse, is confronting the crystal menace with the community on her side.

“It wasn’t the meth labs that were the issue; it was the impacts on the community and the children,” said Wickersham.  

Dr. Gizzi praises the Meth Task Force Center’s work, “Communities are coming together to fight this drug. Fight meth, finding ways to do it using evidence based practice, prevention, treatment and enforcement and it’s something that is unique in the area.”

At the beginning of the meth influx, Wickerhsham’s coalition had the mindset of focusing on huge PR campaigns that were “un-impactful.” Wickerhsham said the Meth Task Force has switched from broad publicity campaigns to orienting themselves on the education of meth use at the home on a family-to-family basis.

“We are definitely reaching a broad range of people in the community, because let’s face it, you need to know about it because it is so important to be educated…Yes, it is a scary drug–but yes—there is hope,” said Wickersham.